


Extra! Extra!

by femvimes



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, M/M, OT3, Romance, dwarfs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6155519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femvimes/pseuds/femvimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The characters from The Truth don't get enough love. Here's me trying to rectify that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> William is hopeless when it comes to romance, especially dwarfs'.

Boddony and Goodmountain are going to get married. This is a fact. Caslong and Gowdie have been talking excited to Goodmountain about it. This is another fact. Boddony is never around during these conversations. This is an observation. As a reporter, William is very careful not to get those two things mixed up.

  
“He’s not much for frippery,” Gowdie says when William asks him about Boddony’s apparent reluctance. “Goodmountain is doing all the planning. It’s going to be a traditional wedding. Braided beards, jeweled axes, you know.”

  
“Traditional,” William echoes. He can guess what a dwarf wedding will look like. He and Sacharissa and the rest of the staff are going, of course. Even Otto is invited, although Boddony took some convincing. Even after a year, he still doesn’t like Otto.

  
“So…” William continues, with a reporter’s unerring skill at digging himself deeper, “both Boddony and Goodmountain will be in helmets and chainmail?”

  
“Of course.” Gowdie gives him a strange look. “What else would they be wearing?”

  
“Yes, William, they’re both male,” Sacharissa explains patiently. Wiliam has interrupted her hard at work on a story about Commander Vimes’s new son.

  
“I’m just trying to understand,” William says desperately. “Obviously they aren’t both male.”

  
“And why not?” Sacharissa looks up from her desk. She folds her hands primly. “It’s not polite to inquire after a dwarf’s gender, you know that. Boddony and Goodmountain present as male, so they’re both male.”

  
“But they’re in the city!” William protests. “There are female dwarfs all over the place—“

  
“Yes, and they’re two very traditional mountain dwarfs.” Sacharissa picks up her pencil and goes back to writing. “Even if they are actually male under all that armor, they obviously love each other.”

  
“Do they?”

Boddony mainly seems annoyed to William. Sacharissa smiles to herself as she writes.

  
“Haven’t you noticed that whenever Boddony goes out to get rat and chips, he always brings back some for Goodmountain? And Goodmountain is the only one who can get Boddony to calm down when he’s upset?”

  
An image comes unbidden to William’s mind of Otto and Sacharissa getting him to leave the office at three in the morning after the 25th of May Storm. He shakes the memory away.

  
“I guess they must love each other if they’re getting married,” he says.

  
“Yes, dear,” says Sacharissa, her head bent over the page.

  
As William walks away, he realizes that Sacharissa has never called him “dear” before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> William and Sacharissa discuss things with Otto.

William and Otto have an Understanding. It’s a different Understanding from the one William has with Sacharissa, but it still makes him feel guilty. He is very surprised, therefore, to go into Otto’s darkroom one day and found Otto and Sacharissa talking quietly. Sacharissa turns bright red when she sees him, and _oh gods_ —

“Hello, Villiam,” says Otto brightly. He is as oblivious as ever.

“Hello, darling,” says Sacharissa. “I was just talking to Otto.”

“That’s allowed,” says William. His mind is racing. He has a Thing with Otto, but he also has a Thing with Sacharissa. But judging by Sacharissa’s extremely readable face, she and Otto also have, maybe, possibly, a Thing. Does that work? Is that a good or bad Thing? Is that even a problem that people have had before?

And most importantly—can they make it work?

“I vas just telling Sacharissa stories about my childhood back in Uberwald,” says Otto. He begins to pin iconographs to the string that stretches the length of the room. “They vere most amusing.”

“Actually, they were quite sad,” Sacharissa says to William. She has come to stand next to him, and gives him a nervous smile. The red light that bathes all of their faces has an eerie quality. Otto, with his pale face and dark hair, would look positively evil were he not staring at his iconographs with a loving expression.

“Such a nice vun of you two,” he says fondly. William and Sacharissa join him to look at the iconograph. It’s a candid of the two of them at young Lady Eveline Venturi’s Debutante Ball. They look harried—Sacharissa’s hair is coming undone, and William’s cravat is crooked—but they’re grinning at each other. William remembers exactly what they were smiling at: the young Lady Eveline had attempted to make a move on the Postmaster. The panicked expression on Moist’s face was immensely satisfying.

William realizes that he and Sacharissa are standing awfully close to Otto. They’re flanking him, with their elbows touching his.

“I do love it in here,” Otto sighs. “The color is so calming. I used to associate red vith ze b-vurd, but now vhenever I see it I am reminded of ze hours spent in here.”

“How do you get by without eating, Otto?” Sacharissa asks softly.

Otto shrugs. “Any hunger I have can be satiated vith ze art of iconography. For example, vhenever I zink of biting somevun, I just take an iconograph of zem and ze feeling goes avay.”

William looks around the room. He hadn’t noticed it before now, but there are quite a few iconographs of himself and Sacharissa hanging from the walls. Sacharissa seems to have noticed this as well. Even in this light, William can see the shade she’s turning. His own face is growing rather hot.

Otto finally seems to notice their discomfort. His hands begin to tremble, and he looks around wildly.

“Vhere is zat stupid obscurograph?” he mutters. Without even realizing that they’ve done it, Sacharissa and William each take one of his hands.

“It’s okay, Otto,” Sacharissa says gently.

“We know you don’t want to hurt us,” William says.

Otto hunches his shoulders. “I know zat isn’t how you do things here,” he mumbles. “And ze two of you are so happy together.”

“We aren’t, actually,” admits Sacharissa. “I mean, we _are_. But I for one am happiest when it’s all three of us, working on a story.”

“Me too,” says William, grateful that Sacharissa has put the feeling into words.

Otto grips their hands. His pale fingers are cold, but strong. As Otto squeezes his hand, William wonders idly just how strong Otto is, and how much he has to hold himself back.

“You two are…so vunderful,” Otto says. “But I don’t vant to ruin things by going too fast.”

“Are you kidding?” Sacharissa laughs suddenly. “William and I have been walking out for almost a year and we aren’t even engaged yet!”

“Yes, thank you, Sacharissa,” coughs William. Most of that is on his part. Gods knew that Ankh-Morpork was a modern city, but Sacharissa was not a modern woman. If anyone was going to be doing the proposing, it would be him. And that was why they weren’t engaged yet.

“We can take it slow, Otto. There isn’t a set of rules for this sort of thing.”

“There wasn’t for newspapers, either, until we invented them,” Sacharissa points out.

“How innovative of us,” William murmurs.


End file.
